One of the accused arrested in the 2016 Nagrota Army camp attack case for allegedly facilitating three Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorists had returned to India via the Nepal route in 2011 along with his family, according to a chargesheet filed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) recently.
Seven Army personnel were killed in a strike by three JeM terrorists on November 29, 2016. The NIA made the first arrest in the case in May 2018 when it arrested Muneer-ul-Hassan Qadri, a resident of Kupwara.
The Nepal route was used by several ex-militants from Jammu and Kashmir, who had crossed over to Pakistan between 1989-2000, when militancy was its peak, to come back to India. This informal route was proposed by former Jammu and Kashmir Chief minister Omar Abdullah in 2010 as part of the State’s rehabilitation policy for former militants.
The route was scrapped in 2017 by the Home Ministry but by the time 377 out of 4,000 total former militants along with 864 family members had returned via the Nepal route.
The NIA filed a chargesheet in the terror attack case recently where it said that Qadri had left for Pakistan in 1990 and was associated with People’s League (Rehmani) and Al Barq in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) till 1993. “He underwent arms and training physical training in the Al Barq terrorist camp in PoK. He returned to India via Nepal with his family in May 2011 in accordance with CM rehabilitation program. During his stay in Pakistan, he came in touch with Wasim, the operational and district commander of JeM. Waseem wanted to carry out fidayeen attack in India and offered to pay Qadri ₹7-10 lakh for each group containing 3-4 trained terrorists of JeM for collecting them from Pakistan border in Jammu and for their subsequent transportation to a safe place for further carrying out attack on security forces in J&K,” the chargesheet said.
Canine assistance
In its chargesheet, the NIA also mentioned the role played by Dino, a tracker dog in establishing the route taken by the terrorists to enter the Nagrota camp. “Dino’s handler got him to sniff the socks of one of the slain terrorists and he tracked the route from where they entered the camp,” the NIA said.
Another of the accused, Mohammad Ashiq Baba, had obtained a Pakistani visa on reference letters issued by the Hurriyat Conference, the NIA said.
The NIA said the accused were in touch with senior JeM leader Mufti Asghar based at Muzaffarabad in PoK through voice calls and texts on WhatsApp.
The NIA said that Baba visited Pakistan four times from 2015-17 via the Attari-Wagah border and he also got training at JeM’s camp in Manshera, Pakistan.
